SOA and Glittering Crystal Shards

WARNING: This post raises a theoretical, geek-like issue, with acronyms tossed about like glittering crystal shards thrown haphazardly onto black pavement, right in the path of unsuspecting drivers careening down the road…The erp4it blog raises a question about “the relationship between IT Service Management and Service Oriented Architecture…”.

WARNING: This post raises a theoretical, geek-like issue, with acronyms tossed about like glittering crystal shards thrown haphazardly onto black pavement, right in the path of unsuspecting drivers careening down the road…

Regardless of the overloading of that hapless word “Service,” the distinct history behind the two usages is relatively clear. The genesis of ITSM is found in the success of the ITIL Service Support and Service Delivery volumes, two volumes that have had a primarily operational audience and interpretation.

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SOA, on the other hand, is rooted in the history of software development, with origins traceable to re-usable transactions in mainframe environments, and an entire subsequent history involving developments such as the emergence of object orientation, component based development (e.g. CORBA and COM/DCOM), and the standardization of the IETF specs and the realization that a URL could be seen as simply a (slightly clunky) function call.

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I am beginning to reach the conclusion that indeed, SOA “services” and ITSM “services” can and should be considered identical, with a granularity of between 150-200 for the typical large enterprise. Applications are too fine grained, and individual service components even more so.

There’s a lot of hype and buzz around SOA these days. I find it refreshing to hear from someone who actually knows what he is talking about, even if the points seem academic on the surface. Charles T. Betz, author of the erp4it blog is worth listening to on these issues.